My name is Konstantin Delov and I’ve been part of the Mantracourt Marketing team for almost half a year now. I spent my summer working on improving our online presence and supporting our network of technical partners in the promotion of our products. I was fortunate enough to be around and participate in the preparation of two of our product launches – both T24 and BroadWeigh Updated Range.

In the next few lines, I’d like to reveal a unique side of Mantracourt that very few people can see, along with a short story on my participation at an international innovation competition.

Behind every great achievement stand a number of strong supporters. People’s attention is often focused on the final result, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of the bits that quietly, but consistently contribute to it. Just like our signal interface solutions that support a variety of industries, often remaining unnoticed.

A few months ago, I heard that same monotonous buzz indicating an incoming email. Though the content of the message was a bit more special than usual. I was being notified by Microsoft corporation that me and my Exeter University team had reached the World Wide finals of the biggest student competition there is – The Microsoft Imagine Cup. I was going to visit their HQ in Redmond, Seattle, play with HoloLens and pitch to some of the most influential figures in the corporation.

Sounds exciting, but it’s not the type of trip that you just go to. It tested our limits as a team and individuals, required us to burn the midnight oil on a frequent basis. It involved thorough planning and outstanding discipline. Selling an idea is not among the easiest of things.

Fortunately, the work paid off and my team became third worldwide in the innovation category!

And yes, it might have been me filling out the quotes for the press releases and smiling for the photos but, once again, without the skills that I had gained at Mantracourt things could have looked way different. The company taught me consistency. I managed to get a close look of how an organisation with worldwide distribution gets its message across and reaches its sales targets. You can’t simply learn these lessons in a lecture theatre.

In this day and age, Mantracourt is a rare example of a company that doesn’t just blindly follow numbers. It is a place where every employee, customer, supplier or contractor is respected as a valuable part of a team, rather than a production or sales robot. And this pays off. Every piece of electronics that comes out of our factory is manufactured and tested by people who want to see the company thrive. Every board that we sell is sought and needed by the customer. We always make sure that it will genuinely help them towards achieving their goal, be it for project or distribution purposes.

By Konstantin Delov, Marketing Intern at Mantracourt

My name is Fabian and I am twenty years of age.  I started working at Mantracourt Electronics in November 2013 as an Electronic Manufacturing apprentice.

When the opportunity came along to start an apprenticeship at Mantracourt I jumped at the chance.  I have always been interested in technology and had worked on my own projects in my spare time, including fixing resisters and capacitors on iphones, PC’s and gaming consoles.  To have the opportunity to do something that interests me where I could work and train at the same time with good job prospects was a dream come true.

When I first started, one of my first tasks was to learn the basics of soldering different types of retrofit components and surface mounts components.  Although a little daunting at first, this was a skill that I picked up very quickly.  I also learnt how to rework circuitry; this is a particularly useful skill for moving components, if needed.

I started practising on scrap boards until my team leader decided that I was competent enough to work on products.  This was really exciting because when a board that I soldered passed test for the first time, my team leader was very impressed and I felt proud of myself.

I was also taught about the effects of Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) and how to prevent it in the workplace.

A month later I was learning a lot of new skills, such as how to use the EBSO machine (selective soldering machine).  This was a great privilege because only certain people are trained on this and it felt great to have importance and responsibility in a job.

I attend college once a week and am studying maths and science.  I also learn about how to work with machines and different types of tools in the workshop.  The workshop lesson is my favourite aspect because I am learning skills that are really useful at Mantracourt and compliment the in-house training that I receive.

The best thing about working at Mantracourt is the fact that I am learning new skills and I have finally discovered something that I’m good at and enjoy, and the bonus is I get paid for doing it!

It is also so rewarding to see the end results of a product that I have spent time on, finished and working and ready to go off to our customers.

As an apprentice I will get the opportunity to work in all aspects of the business, including  sales, marketing and with the design engineers.  There is a great team of people here.

As part of the in-house training and education I have worked with various products from our standard product range.  An example is the SGA/D, which is a high performance signal conditioner, for use with strain gauges.  It offers a wide bandwidth and a wide input signal range.

Let me explain the processes this item goes through in basic terms…

This product starts by going through the SMT Line (surface mount machine), this puts all the surface mount components in their correct places.

The next step is a high speed visual inspection by a machine that checks that each component is correctly located, checks for the integrity of the solder joints and can also identify if any component has an incorrect value.

Once this is done it is moved over to the EBSO machine.  This is where all the retrofit components are put into place and soldered with a small ‘wave’ of solder.  The correct nitrogen levels are essential.  We put four of these boards through on each run, and each run takes about 12 minutes.

For every operation that is undertaken on the product you must mark off on the Product Database which stage it is at and how many products have been through this stage.  This means that once the boards have been through the SMT line they must be marked off and inspected.

After the boards have been through all of the assembly processes it’s time for them to get tested.

All products undergo rigorous quality testing and we have different methods of doing this, but they mainly undergo testing by the automatic test equipment system (ATE) using various jigs.

Once the SGA’s have passed the ATE test they are then put into their respective cases and are transferred to the dispatch department, where they are put into stock, or packaged and sent off to our customers.

I think the biggest challenge for me so far has been learning all of the different component names and learning where each component is stored.  This took some time but now I am familiar with these…it’s just like riding a bike!

My goals for the future are to learn how the entire organisation works, and to have first-hand experience of every aspect of the company.  I would love to get involved with product design and create my own product for the company one day…. watch this space!!!

By Fabian Gilson, Electronic Manufacturing Apprentice at Mantracourt

2014 marks the 40th anniversary for Mantracourt Electronics and throughout this year we will be delving into the archives to share with you some of the highlights from the past four decades.

From our humble beginnings, which started life in a garden shed to the 3,600 sq ft manufacturing facilities we now occupy, we have supplied measurement instrumentation to some very well known and innovative projects.

One such project came along in 1985 and involved NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme.  A temperature and humidity monitor supplied to Solomat, another East Devon company at the time, was supplied to Honeywell and used in a satellite which was carried by the space shuttle.

The story is captured in the article below and tells the tale of our beginnings and of the project.

“Into Space from East Devon” – Wednesday, 31 July, 1985 (Source: Express & Echo)

We hope to post some more articles and photos from our archives during this anniversary year to entertain and inspire! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.